FOOTBALL is a game. Yes, it can be fun. If we stretcha little bit, we might even be able to call it important. But it isn't the be-all and end-all of college existence; life shouldn't grind to a halt every time there's a home game. By making members of the academic community schedule their lives around football, the administration proves that it has its priorities seriously out of whack.
Tomorrow, more than 50,000 people were supposed to come to Scott Stadium to watch the football team play Penn State in the ESPN nationally-televised game of the week. In order to make room for them to have tailgate parties, University employees would have had to move their cars from lots used by football fans no later than 4:00 p.m. or be "relocated" - that is, towed. According to Parking and Transportation Director Rebecca White, this includes the stadium lots, the lots behind the Engineering School and the Chemistry building, and the B1 lot behind Cabell Hall, all of which house hundreds of cars belonging to professors and employees.
These things occur for Saturday games as well, so there's nothing new about the annoyances of living near a 60,000-seat stadium. But what is new is that activities associated with games will now take place during a normal 9-to-5 workday. Taking a parking lot away from professors on a Saturday afternoon is one thing. Taking it away on a Thursday - during scheduled, required classes - is quite another.
Realize, now, that the University was not faced with an either/or choice of football or academics. There's no reason that we couldn't have a Thursday game without kicking professors out of their parking spaces. The University simply could tell fans that they have to park at University Hall for this game because their tailgating lots still will be occupied by academic personnel. Sorry for the inconvenience, but classes come before football.
But the University has chosen tailgating over teaching; that choice is about money, pure and simple. Professors do pay for their parking spaces - some over $300 per year, according to David T. Gies, Commonwealth Professor of Spanish and former Faculty Senate chair. But donors to the Virginia Student Aid Foundation give more. According to Tena Johnson, office administrator for VSAF, the minimum amount an individual must contribute to even apply for a parking space at a football game is $700, and most of the better spaces only go to contributors of $5,000 or more.
So, come tomorrow afternoon, VSAF contributors were planning to eat chicken salad and drink bourbon in Prof. Gies' parking space behind Cabell Hall while he teaches a class a few hundred feet away. Fans would have been in that space when his class ends at 6:00, and later, when a bus finally gets him back to his car. And Gies isn't alone. A search of the Course Offering Directory reveals over 350 classes that are scheduled to end after 4:00 on Thursday. Presumably, most of those professors drive to work and most will not cancel class for a football game that doesn't start until 7:30.
The fact that those professors will have to walk further or take a bus isn't the point. Rather, it's priorities the University reveals - football above teaching and money above all - that are disturbing. Says Gies, "That the University would allow this to happen seems to me to be a symbol - the very worst symbol - of what we stand for."
Football games put the University in a national spotlight, creating positive publicity for the institution. They bring recognition to the athletes and coaches who work hard at their jobs and generate tourism money for the city's hotels and restaurants. Those are all beneficial things. But there's no reason the University couldn't have all of them without slighting academics, and without telling professors that they are less important than a drunk football fan with a few thousand dollars to buy a parking space.
Administrators have to make decisions all the time that involve a conflict between interests, and many of those choices reflect priorities. This choice tells the world that athletics are our first priority - that our academic program is for sale to anyone who wants to throw a pre-game party as long as they have enough money. (Editor's note: Due to yesterday's tragedy, Thursday's game has been suspended indefinately.)
(Bryan Maxwell's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bmaxwell@cavalierdaily.com.)
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